1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates Web services and, more particularly, to permitting Web services to be “overloaded” by allowing a set of related Web services having different input data structures to be associated with a common identification name.
2. Description of the Related Art
Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is a language for describing Web services such as services registered with a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) directory. Providers of Web services can provide interface specifications for interacting with a Web service, when they register it with a directory via a WSDL formatted message. Requestors desiring the Web service can generate a message compliant with the disclosed data structure of the Web service, which is conveyed to the provider.
The provider can determine whether the received message is compliant with the interface specification based on whether each element in the message matches the corresponding element in the data written in WSDL. If the message is compliant with the specification, the service is appropriately processed. Otherwise, the message is rejected. It is possible for a requester to automatically generate application programs for requesting services on the basis of the definition data contained in a Web services directory.
It should be noted that messages used for requesting Web services can contain a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for identifying a service providing device, an identification name of a service to be requested, and input data to be fed to processing of the service. Definition data written in WSDL defines interfaces of Web services as combinations of such a URI, an identification name, and a data structure of the input data. A Web service request message uniquely identifies a Web services using the URI and the service identification name. It is currently impossible to associate multiple different Web services in a Web service directory with a common identification name, since it can result in a conflict when attempting to access the Web service.